WASHINGTON — Just because the Emmys are over doesn’t mean you can’t still see a fiercely talented Emmy winner on stage right here in our own backyard.
Starting this weekend, the prolific Marg Helgenberger (“CSI,” “China Beach,” “Erin Brockovich”) graces Arena Stage for a production of Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” from Sept. 23-Oct. 30.
It’s all part of a larger Hellman Festival at Arena Stage, celebrating the famed playwright who cranked out classic works like “Watch on the Rhine,” “Toys in the Attic” and “The Children’s Hour,” all while romancing fellow author Dashiell Hammett, who created Det. Sam Spade in “The Maltese Falcon.”
“Arena Stage likes to choose a playwright per season to highlight,” Helgenberger told WTOP. “In the past, they’ve done Eugune O’Neill and Arthur Miller, and this is their first female playwright, the first female giant of American playwrights. Not that people have necessarily forgotten who Lillian Hellman was … but she really was not only an extraordinary writer, but she had an extraordinary life.”
Hellmen penned “The Little Foxes” in 1939, setting her tale four decades earlier in the Deep South, as the Hubbard Family struggles to run a 1900 cotton plant in a small town near Mobile, Alabama.
“They don’t always do things above board, not only with the people they’re in business with but with each other,” Helgenberger said. “They’re always backstabbing and going around each other. It’s a real tale of greed and betrayal and obviously dysfunction big time. But it’s got actually a lot of humor in it.”
Helgenberger plays Regina Giddens, who jockeys with her upper-middle-class brothers, Ben (Edward Gero) and Oscar (Gregory Linington), on a quest to live a more adventurous high society life.
“It’s been an interesting role,” she said. “She’s been described as a monstrous b**ch, but you can’t approach a character with a judgment like that. You have to understand this person’s motivations, desires and wants. It’s a challenging part, because she’s very bright, very complex and funny. … She’s charming, quick, witty, yet she’s also manipulative, cruel at times, but that’s what makes it a fun part.”
Oscar is played by Gregory Linington, who you’ll recognize from “Equivocation” at Arena Stage, while Ben is played by D.C. favorite Edward Gero, who annually played Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol” at Ford’s Theatre before becoming the late Justice Antonin Scalia in “The Originalist” at Arena Stage.
“[Gero] is a doll,” Helgenberger said. “I love hearing all the things he’s done here in Washington. He’s played practically every role that’s been written in American literature [or] English plays. But the whole cast is terrific and the costumes are just exquisite. I cannot wait to put those costumes on.”
As you can imagine, the dress code was a bit different in the Deep South circa 1900.
“The women have bustles and corsets, which I’m not crazy about that idea, but it is an ‘attractive silhouette,’ as they say,” Helgenberger said. “It was a really beautiful time in fashion. If people are familiar with that show ‘The Knick’ on Cinemax, that’s the era. Or ‘Age of Innocence,’ those Edith Wharton-type novels. And the sets are going to be incredible. It’s fun to do period [pieces].”
Speaking of screen comparisons, Helgenberger prefers the stage version of “The Little Foxes” to the 1941 film, which was adapted by Hellman herself en route to nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director (William Wyler), Best Screenplay (Hellman) and Best Actress (Bette Davis).
“I have seen the film, which is not like the play,” Helgenberger said. “They’ve added some characters, they’ve opened it up a little. … Actually, I have to say, I did not necessarily like the things they added.”
If anyone has the cred to make such judgments, it’s Helgenberger, boasting a prolific career of famous roles on stage and screen. Growing up in North Bend, Nebraska — “Population 1,200!” she declares — Helgenberger first got in front of a camera by reporting the weather at a local television station.
“I went to a college in Nebraska called Kearney State College for two years, then I transferred to Northwestern,” she said. “But in that summer between my sophomore and junior year, I did the weather. … Honestly, I sucked! But I winked into the lens and they thought that was charming. It was hard! I had to make my own maps … with my magic marker, high-pressure systems, so rudimentary.”
Bigger roles came at Northwestern University, where she starred as Blanche in “A Streetcar Named Desire” and alongside Julia Louis-Dreyfus in “Threepenny Opera.” But it was her role as Kate in “Taming of the Shrew” that got her seen by an ABC casting agent, who recommended her for the TV soap opera “Ryan’s Hope” (1975-1989), beginning a long and successful career in television.
Her breakthrough role came as the heroin-addicted prostitute K.C. Kolowski in ABC’s hit series “China Beach” (1988-1991), following life in a Da Nang evacuation hospital during the Vietnam War.
“The show focused on a lot of the female characters, the nurses that were there, the Red Cross volunteers also known as Doughnut Dollies, the USO performers. … She really was one of the first yuppies, one of the first entrepreneurial women during the war. … Yes, I was servicing the upper echelon. … It was just a really fun character. Just very sassy and told it like it was. Great part.”
The role earned her three Emmy nominations, including a 1990 win for Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Made-for-TV Movie, followed by her very first Golden Globe nomination in 1991.
The sudden TV acclaim got her cast as Rachel in Steven Spielberg’s romantic movie fantasy “Always” (1989), starring alongside Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, Keith David and John Goodman.
“Steven Spielberg, what can you say?” Helgenberger said. “I was on ‘China Beach’ at the time. I walk into the room to meet him and he says, ‘I’m a big fan of yours.’ I was like, ‘Wow.’ I was so taken aback by that, to be complimented by Steven Spielberg. … He loves making movies. In fact, I even overheard him say, … ‘God, I love making movies!’ To have it come out of his mouth like that, it was so incredible.”
While it was Helgenberger’s first film, it was the final film for screen legend Audrey Hepburn.
“I didn’t get a chance to meet her, but I can still claim I was in Audrey Hepburn’s last film!”
A decade later, a different “Steven S-Berg” would come calling, this time Steven Soderbergh in the Academy Award-winning drama “Erin Brockovich” (2000). Julia Roberts won her Best Actress Oscar with the help of Helgenberger, who played the cancer-ridden Donna Jensen, a compilation of several real-life victims poisoned by PG&E chemicals that contaminated the California groundwater supply.
“Steven, I just adore him,” Helgenberger said. “Ed Lachman was the D.P., but Steven would sometimes operate and that was fun because he’d give you a direction and look out from the lens with a thumbs up. … He moves super fast, which was kind of nice having done so much television in my life. Not a ton of takes and very little rehearsals, mostly because Julia doesn’t really enjoy a lot of rehearsals.”
Sixteen years later, the movie has become a feminist film classic for the 21st century.
“Anytime an underdog takes on a big bad corporation and wins, who doesn’t love that story?” she said. “It’s now considered sort of a classic. And Julia, it was such a beautiful marriage between a personality and a character. She was fantastic in that movie and great to work with, so supportive and fun and easy to get along with. … It’s just a great film. I’m really proud to be a part of that film.”
That very same year, Helgenberger found her most famous role yet on television, becoming a household name as crime-scene investigator Catherine Willows on “CSI” (2000-2015).
“‘CSI’ was a global phenomenon,” Helgenberger said. “Everywhere I go in the world, I get recognized. In fact, I was in Cuba a couple of years ago before the travel ban was lifted. … The moment I stepped through immigration, I got recognized throughout the country. It was such a shock. I had no idea.”
The hit CBS role earned her two Emmy nominations and two Golden Globe nominations.
“I had a really strong feeling the show was gonna be a hit when I shot the pilot,” she said. “I thought, ‘Wow, we’re onto something here.’ I never would have assumed it would have had the global reach it’s had or had the impact on young people wanting to become criminalists. It’d be nice if every actor could have the opportunity to be on a show that has that kind of success, because it’s a fun ride.”
Not only was it a fun ride, it also changed the public’s perception of the justice system.
“There’s this term called ‘The CSI Effect’ that’s sometimes equated with a negative term in solving a case; sometimes the court system doesn’t always appreciate it, that the jury wants, ‘Well, why can’t you get the tox results in 48 minutes like they do on ‘CSI?'” Helgenberger said, laughing.
While she left the show in 2012, she returned for guest spots on the 300th episode and the two-part series finale “Immortality” in 2015, the same year she starred in Stephen King’s “Under the Dome.”
These days, Catherine Willows may be retired, but Helgenberger isn’t going away anytime soon.
How better to fight your “CSI” withdrawal than by seeing Marg live in “Little Foxes” at Arena Stage?
“The characters are all really defined,” Helgenberger said. “That’s what great writing is all about. It becomes richer and richer the more you explore it. We’ve been in rehearsals and we keep discovering new things. And I think throughout the run we’ll probably still discover: ‘Oh! That’s what that means.'”
Watch the entire conversation with Marg Helgenberger in our Facebook Live video below:
